“4th, A general mourning will be observed for twenty-one days.

“5th, Prayers and a funeral service are to be offered up in all the churches.

(Signed) “A.  MAVROCORDATO. 
“GEORGE PRAIDIS, Secretary.

“Given at Missolonghi,
this 19th day of April, 1824.”

Similar honours were paid to his memory at many other places through Greece.  At Salona, where the Congress had assembled, his soul was prayed for in the Church; after which the whole garrison and the citizens went out into the plain, where another religious ceremony took place, under the shade of the olive trees.  This being concluded, the troops fired; and an oration, full of the warmest praise and gratitude, was pronounced by the High Priest.

When such was the veneration shown towards him by strangers, what must have been the feelings of his near associates and attendants?  Let one speak for all:—­“He died (says Count Gamba) in a strange land, and amongst strangers; but more loved, more sincerely wept he never could have been, wherever he had breathed his last.  Such was the attachment, mingled with a sort of reverence and enthusiasm, with which he inspired those around him, that there was not one of us who would not, for his sake, have willingly encountered any danger in the world.”

Colonel Stanhope, whom the sad intelligence reached at Salona, thus writes to the Committee:—­“A courier has just arrived from the Chief Scalza.  Alas! all our fears are realised.  The soul of Byron has taken its last flight.  England has lost her brightest genius, Greece her noblest friend.  To console them for the loss, he has left behind the emanations of his splendid mind.  If Byron had faults, he had redeeming virtues too—­he sacrificed his comfort, fortune, health, and life, to the cause of an oppressed nation.  Honoured be his memory!”

Mr. Trelawney, who was on his way to Missolonghi at the time, describes as follows the manner in which he first heard of his friend’s death:—­“With all my anxiety I could not get here before the third day.  It was the second, after having crossed the first great torrent, that I met some soldiers from Missolonghi.  I had let them all pass me, ere I had resolution enough to enquire the news from Missolonghi.  I then rode back, and demanded of a straggler the news.  I heard nothing more than—­Lord Byron is dead,—­and I proceeded on in gloomy silence.”  The writer adds, after detailing the particulars of the poet’s illness and death, “Your pardon, Stanhope, that I have thus turned aside from the great cause in which I am embarked.  But this is no private grief.  The world has lost its greatest man; I my best friend.”

Among his servants the same feeling of sincere grief prevailed:—­“I have in my possession (says Mr. Hoppner, in the Notices with which he has favoured me,) a letter written by his gondolier Tita, who had accompanied him from Venice, giving an account to his parents of his master’s decease.  Of this event the poor fellow speaks in the most affecting manner, telling them that in Lord Byron he had lost a father rather than a master; and expatiating upon the indulgence with which he had always treated his domestics, and the care he expressed for their comfort and welfare.”